A smoke bomb.
She darts out from beside the potted plant, using the smoke as cover. Edgar takes to the air, following her movements. She hurries toward the body. The smoke is thickand dark, and even Edgar’s mechanically enhanced vision struggles to pierce it.
Carla skids to a halt. He lies on his back, hoodie covering his face. She reaches down for the radio I placed on his chest.
And then the dead man sits up and seizes her by the wrists.
Carla’s scream rips through the air.
But it isn’t Matthew that appears when the hoodie falls away—it’s Eames.
This plan is a little deranged, I will admit. Hastily dragging Matthew’s body into the mail room, then using his bloodstained hoodie to cover Eames with, and luring Carla over to the “body.” It sounds kind of sociopathic when you frame it like that. It was a risk—but desperate times and all.
That scream slices through the lobby, echoing from the walls and warbling back in a ghostly wail.
I flick my fingers, switching my view away from Edgar’s. Then I tear open the door to the mail room and run into the lobby, pepper spray in hand.
Through the thick smoke, I can just make out the struggle.
Carla is startled for only a heartbeat. Eames grips her right arm—the one holding the gun—and brings her down over his own knee, slamming joint against joint.
I recognize the maneuver as a disarming technique. Prefect never let me take combat classes, saying he would train me once I turned eighteen. But he did enroll me in basic self-defense. The gun skitters across the marble.
I’ve really had enough of guns today.
I lunge for the weapon. My fingers almost close around the metal, but then Carla’s booted foot catches me in the shoulder. Agony flares through my left side. My bad side. Rebuilt bones and resewn muscles scream in pain and my vision whites out for a moment.
The gun is still an arm’s length away. Eames grabs Carla by the jacket, but the woman ducks out of her garment and rolls away. She’s agile and quick, and a far better fighter than myself or Eames.
Two teenagers versus one cyberterrorist.
It’s an unfair fight.
Carla glances around, peering through the smoke until her gaze falls on the gun. She dives for it, finger closing around the trigger.
The world slows.
I see the gun barrel come up. Her finger tightens, her arm tensing as she prepares to fire.
I can’t stop her—I’m barely three feet away. She won’t miss me.
And then Eames is between us.
It’s stupid, it’s so stupid. I open my mouth to yell at him to move, to let the inevitable happen. I’m living on borrowed time, but he has his whole life ahead of him.
I won’t let another innocent boy die because of me.
But then something like panic flashes across Carla’s face. She swings the gun upward, even as her finger squeezes the trigger.
A bullet cuts through the thick smoke.
“Will you—” Carla begins to say, but then Eames crashes into her.
He hits her at the waist, and there is a loud crack as one of her knees crashes into the marble floor. She goes down hard, gun falling from her hand. I snatch it up and lob the gun as hard as I can in the direction of the pool. I hear a distant splash.
When I turn back, I see Eames has wrestled Carla to the floor, half pinning and half sitting on her. “Help me,” he snaps.
I fumble for one of the zip ties in my pocket. The smoke stings my eyes but I manage to tie her wrists and ankles. I really should be thanking Anasova for carrying so many zip ties—they’re quite useful. I make a mental note to buy some next time I’m at a hardware store.
